June 1953 East German Uprising Research Project

Another German summer morning began on June 16, 1953, as East Berlin construction workers wormed their way up scaffolding for the pet projects of Russian prestige on Stalinallee. Newspapers circulated the past weekend on the poor handling of workers rights by government officials. Word quickly spread that plans to raise quotas would be hurried instead of halted. Questions about the next meal, the next paycheck, the next day off, if they even came, ran through the mind of agitated, insecure workers. Groups of workers quietly gathered and began discussing how they could react.

Feelings finally fomented about the poor working conditions, as the construction workers marched to the Council of Ministers. Chanting, “We are not slaves,” and carrying a banner reading, “We demand lower quotas,” the workers demanded to see Walter Ulbricht and other top leaders personally. The bold actions of a few in Berlin led many to do the same all over East Germany. The spark in Berlin started a movement, as one city after another found its squares filled in protest by the very workers that were supposedly empowered by Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist ideology.

Western observers regarded the brief uprising as a desperate cry for unification and democracy. The Russians viewed it as the plot of right-wing reactionaries and CIA moles. However, the actual cause of the revolt cannot be found in either explanation. Fascists, Communists, fighters for democracy, and Nationalists alike spilled out into the streets to march; yet, the workers’ voice was the only one to resonate. For too long the Soviets disregarded German workforce in labor disputes, collectivist agreements, and at party conferences.

Workers had legitimate grievances. “Socialization,” the process of converting segments of privately owned business, industry, and commerce to state-owned operations, had been pushed too fast and too far in a country on the brink of economic collapse. Workers’ rights had been shelved. Reasonable living conditions had been thrown out in favor of a dream of a better, yet unforeseeable tomorrow; and, like so many outspoken political prisoners, civil liberties had been held hostage. Life became intolerable for most East Germans, helping to aggravate a general disgruntlement throughout the population. The back of one segment of the population finally broke, as buried inaction in the workers turned into a fervent reaction. Seeking lower living costs, higher wages, and reasonable quotas, thousands poured into the street against the Soviets and the deprived lifestyle they brought with Socialization.

The Communist takeover in East Germany was not the result of a popular workers revolution. Instead, the Russians, a foreign power, forced communism upon a people who did not want it. Executing a Russian approach to socialism on German people, East Germany truly developed into a satellite of the Soviet Union. In a nation where the Communist Party (KPD) was one of the most unpopular parties, where a segment of the population still loathed the Socialists for supposedly stabbing them in the back in World War I, and recent memories of rampant Soviet abuse as the Red Army crashed into Nazi Germany still loomed, resistance naturally existed. The Soviets realized that at least some popular acceptance would be needed to successfully conduct Socialization. But realizations and knowledge do not lead to successful policy, as the Russians futile efforts at generating popularity and support only breed increased opposition. By instituting a government system that with legitimacy, the Soviets created a hostile environment in which their policies and their selected leaders received no reverence from the people.

The first of many botched attempts to bring about support for Socialization began in 1946. The Russians called for the merger of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the KPD. The SPD was a leftist party with large popular support, but was also a party that would not corroborate with the introduction of communism (Brant 15). In March of 1946, eighty percent of SPD members voted no against a planned merger of the KPD and SPD (Brant 16). But within a month of the vote, Moscow leaders decided that the ballot had no relevance and announced “in the interests of working-class solidarity” that the KPD and SPD had been combined to form “a single proletarian movement” with the creation of the Socialist Unity Party, or the SED (Brant 16). The SED quickly developed into the sole political party of the German Democratic Republic, yet by June of 1953, the party was as unpopular as the KPD had been in 1946.

Individuals also served as targets of the new regime. The Christian Democrat Union and the Liberal Democratic Party, although not officially outlawed, were officially noted as “bourgeois” parties and monitored by the state. In 1952, Foreign Minister George Dertinger of the CDU was arrested for “hostile activities,” and Minister of Food Dr. Hamann of the LDP was imprisoned as a “saboteur” (Brant 45). The colleagues of these two men were all forced to sign a disposition backing up the states claims of the statesmen being traitors (Brant 45). Opposition to socialization was all but a capital offense with party’s outlawed and individual opposition prosecuted in show trials of ‘traitors’. Free will and political choice were quickly torn away from the nation, leaving no one left in power to listen or be accountable to the opinions of the populace. The workers, untrusting of the SED, had no place to turn but the streets to express their disenchantment.
But the political arena was not the only area meddling from Russian bureaucrats that would bring about the disapproval of the worker. The Second Party Conference would be the first economic interference in an attempt to employ Soviet-like five-year plans. In July of 1952 at the Second Party Conference in Berlin, Ulbricht declared the “establishment of socialism,” which meant that the government finished transferring private business to state ownership (Baring12). Essentially, this meant attention shifted from conversion to the acceleration of state production. This placed an impossible burden on all industries, demanding dramatically increased output without a parallel increase in wages. For instance, in 1936, at one of the high points of Nazi output, production of ingot steel hit 1.2 million tons. Plans announced at the Second Party Conference called for production to reach 3.4 million tons in 1955 when it was almost at its capacity at 1.9 tons in 1952 (Baring 7, 13). Initially, wages increased, but the GDR government, unable to fulfill its plans regarding salary raises, instated new payment systems on due wages.

Retroactive quotas especially incited the Stalinallee construction workers. Quotas were the Communists’ answer to capitalist incentive: each individual laborer, in order to receive pay, had to reach a certain level of productivity. In June 1953, as socialization plans were being phased in, the Party decided output had to increase immediately, which meant rising quotas. Unable to pay workers, they decided quotas would be enacted retroactively, thus reducing what was owed to workers. Workers found their paychecks considerably less than what they had expected.

Where did all of the goods go though? How did quotas continually increase, and yet the stores remained empty of the bare necessities of life? The answer is simple: the Russians demanded incredibly high reparations for the damage that had been incurred during World War II. The East Germans were forced to concentrate their work force in areas of heavy industry, thus ignoring consumer production. No profit came of this concentration because everything was sent to Russia without any economic exchange. Furthermore, many factories were completely disbanded and sent to Russia. The industrial capacity of East Germany was pushed to its capacity while consumer goods were put on the back burner. Food and clothing shortages typified the East German experience. In the Soviet’s blindness, the GDR lacked the basic essentials while train car after train car filled with German goods traveled to the Soviet Union.

However, despite a new political system that stressed class destruction and ‘equality,’ the Soviets brought a new way of life that failed to produce anything close to economic parity. The most telling slogan of the uprising was the East Berlin workers’ plea “to live like humans.” Life was a struggle for every German, as exemplified by Horst Schlafke. Historian Rainer Hildebrandt describes how Horst Schlafke was pushed into combat as a Hitler Youth at age sixteen, placed in Soviet reeducation camps at eighteen, and then pressed into three years of forced labor in the Ukraine (13). Schlafke had seen the worst of all worlds (Hildebrandt 14). Waking up at 4:30 AM for the workday, he would be lucky to have a roll and a cup of coffee before a ten-hour shift on the Stalinallee construction projects (Hildebrandt 13). A breakfast would be considered a feast if there was butter to put on the roll (Hildebrandt 13). Like other laborers, he ‘volunteered’ on Saturday afternoons to clean up the rubble the Russians had left eight years earlier, making his total workweek over fifty hours (Hildebrandt 15). He was not afraid of the Russians and became involved in the strike on June 16th and 17th (Hildebrandt 16). His experiences were neither unique nor exceptional. Berliners also remembered when the Soviets rolled into Berlin and were allowed to rampage the city for three days. This event befits the name in history it inherited as “the Great Rape.” Consequently, many East Berliners led their life as a day-to-day struggle to survival and were not afraid of death, let alone standing up to the SED or the Russians. Yet Schlafke, among the most skilled and highly paid workers in the GDR, lived a fairly difficult life, which makes it difficult to imagine the conditions faced by others less fortunate.

Class division still existed despite Soviet attempts to convince the East Germans that it did not. It can be imagined the obvious contradictions the average East German saw in his daily life. They saw high-ranking party officials driving in the few cars of the GDR. They knew that the party officials had separate clothing and food stores available at their disposal. And yet everyday they were bombarded with propaganda disparaging the West and slenderizing everything as “class warfare” and “bourgeois ways”. How can one regard life as classless when it is so obviously not? The only difference between Weimar Germany and the GDR was that party officials replaced the bourgeoisie. Unfortunately for the party officials, their cars would serve as the symbol for the workers to recognize them. They would be promptly dragged out of their cars and beaten on the streets during the uprising. The Soviets did not solve the plight of the German worker from capitalism, but rather made them into fodder for the Communist machine and warping the idea of a classless society by simply replacing one economic group with another.

The uprising began as the simple unrest of a few hundred Berlin workers, soon spreading throughout hundreds of East German cities, and manifesting into a quasi-rebellion, lacking a concise political cause and a unilateral voice. Though the workers in East Berlin established payment according to old quotas, reduction in the cost of living, free and secret elections, and immunity for the strikers as their four basic demands, no uniform course of action was established for the rest of the strikes across the nation that followed (Brant 68). Likewise, no leader emerged out of the demonstrations that occurred all over the country. Instead, worker committees from cities attempted to individually bargain with local officials without an actual understanding of what others were attempting to attain. Though solidarity emerged out from workers in all parts of East Germany, the protesters were unable to capitalize on the backing of the public by not addressing Ulbricht and the Soviets with one voice. As a result of the spontaneity of the revolt, no solid plan emerged and thus a shadow of doubt cast over the uprising that often left strikers in the streets with no idea of what to do next.

Consequently, the uprising reflected the workers misperceptions of the west and their lack of faith SED. The workers believed that any uprising, especially one in the name of “freedom”, would prompt America to assist the revolutionaries. Every sound coming from West Berlin became regarded as coming from the Americans or the Western Allies approaching to save the East Berliners. Unfortunately, they did not realize that America wanted to steer clear from any involvement. They began to believe that things would occur on their own, yet they never did. And even when concessions were supposedly made by the SED, the workers did not trust them because they had frequently lied to them in the past. When the Americans did not come and there was no idea of what to do next, workers often just stood in the street, returned to their work sites, or found a party member to beat up. The workers harnessed a tremendous amount of strength with their numbers, but they had no idea what to do with the power, as their assumptions proved to fail them and their distrust of the SED got the best of them, leaving them to riot in the streets without any sort of direction.

The materialization of the uprising further exemplifies this precarious situation. In “Uprising in East Germany: June 17, 1953”, Arnulf Baring terms the “crucial factor” of the uprising as the ability of “one determined man capable of persuading his colleagues to walk off the job” (68). In this sense, the decision of whether a whole town would revolt or not depended on the one agitated worker who had a true grievance against the SED (Baring 68). Baring continues to note that at a number of factories, large discussions emerged where the possibility of a strike was very real, and yet there was no strike, most likely because nobody had the determination to persuade his fellow workers (68). The situation developed in a spontaneous manner with the strike committees that were elected filled with the workers who had spoken up at the factory or town meeting. Without a central plan or an organized system, the rebellion relied on the one distressed worker to listen to the RIAS broadcasts and advocate for an uprising with his coworkers.

The Soviet response mirrored the ambiguous nature of the revolt itself. Russian tanks and troops soon rolled into the capital city and other areas where protests were taking place. All of East Germany came under a state of emergency as the Soviets regained control (Brant 80). The Soviet army dispersed the crowds in larger cities, but often fraternized and in some cases inadvertently encouraged the workers. By the end of the day, twenty-one people lay dead, with some of the casualties caused by the crowds spotting and killing moles or supposed government spies (Brant 80). Immediate concessions were made such as lowering of quotas and releasing of some political prisoners, but the SED promptly went back to its old ways in a few months after June 1953. The workers on Stalinallee credited with starting the revolt were brought to trial the following year for sedition (Brant 55). The political stability of the SED had been rocked, but the response was a hardening of previous oppressive policies instead of a loosening of the screws.

Problems in analyzing the events of June 1953 appear between the American and Russian discrepancies found in many early historical accounts and statistics. Occurring during the height of McCarthyism and the fear of communism, object historical accounts frequently digress into subjective attacks against the Russian system and Communism as a whole. For instance, Stefan Brant begins the inquiry into June 1953 with a severe critique of the East German system. Brant states (in reference to Socialization plan Russians implemented in East Germany) “The Plan demands great effort. Still man is but the means. And still achievement lags. The system fails” (23). Within a couple of lines, he diverges into an attack against Communism, asserting, “It has often attained the seemingly impossible. Yet it has failed. It has never achieved its end. It has changed the world but not Man; it has transformed conditions of life but not life itself. The Plan has never conquered the individual” (23). When one reads such opinions in the foreword and body, it makes one wonder how accurate the following interpretations will be.

In some areas, it appears that Western historians molded the uprising into what they wanted it to be. Students were the only other group to consistently join in the uprising. People often looked with heavy hearts at the workers uprising, but were too afraid of what Soviet retribution might entail. The picture is often painted as the whole populace filling the streets, demanding democracy and unification. But the uprising does not fit this picture, as the middle class and farmers were conspicuously absent from the affair. Similarly, what is often ignored is the fact that large portions of the strikers were the most adamant and loyal communists seeking a change in economic policy. Ella Sarre, a political instructress, a job entailing the converting and propagandizing of local workers to communist doctrine, and a member of the Free German Youth (FDJ), she was among the few who welcomed the Russian occupation (Hildebrandt 29). She also happened to work on Stalinallee (Hildebrandt 30). On the morning of June 16, she engaged in discussions with the construction workers about the SED’s plans of increasing quotas while reducing wages (Hildebrandt 30). Agreeing with the workers on many issues, she decided to join them on their excursion to the Council of Ministers (Hildebrandt 30). One of the first people to address the crowd, she was greeted with an overwhelming ovation after tossing her blue FDJ jacket to the protestors and saying that the workers must unite to gain their demands (Hildebrandt 31). Barely dodging a visit from the secret police that night, she became one of the small number of women in the front line of the protestors the next day as they approached Brandenburg Gate (Hildebrandt 33). She would be one of thousands devoted communists to rise up against the regime which they viewed as a corruption of the Socialism they had been promised. But Western historians carefully ignored this fact, and would never regard the uprising as a failure to providing decent living conditions, but as a failure of communism itself.
Historical subjectivity not only affected the way the uprising was viewed, but the facts and figures of it as well. Arnulf Baring illuminates the uncertainty the first historians to investigate the uprising faced, revealing that the West estimated the revolt took place in 274 towns, with 372 thousand protesters encompassing roughly seven percent of the workforce (52). Eastern sources concluded it was in 270 towns, with 300 thousand workers encompassing five percent of the workforce (Baring 52). Eastern estimates placed the non-work force involvement in the uprising at forty thousand; Western estimates placed it between seventy and eighty thousand (Baring 63). This disparity in numbers also led to a disparity in the Eastern and Western historical accounts and where the event is placed in history.

A simple explanation for the overly political and popular view that the Western historians deducted can be partly attributed to the unique situation of viewing the uprising from West Berlin. Berlin remained the hotspot for the most intense activity; 61,000 protestors poured through the streets of East Berlin (Large 289). Approximately one fifth of the people revolting in the GDR did so in East Berlin, a considerably high number since the second largest area of revolt was Leipzig with 20,000 protestors (Baring 55). Similar to its position among its predecessors, Berlin also had the most fervent political activity. There were calls for the government to resign, the reunification of Germany, and a parliamentary government, but these beliefs found a home only in the East Berlin demonstrations. The rest of the GDR was more apolitical in its demonstrations, demanding changes in economics and workers rights rather than in the government.

As the strikers on June 16th tried to quickly develop a strategy to make the strike a nationwide affair, some politically radical workers made there way over to West Berlin and reached the Radio in American Sector (RIAS). They told the RIAS that there were thousands waiting to take down the government, creating the idea of an armed revolution (Brant 73). Rather than air the direct call for a general strike, the RIAS reported the unrest in East Berlin, announcing all East Germans had “city squares where they could meet.” Still, the first person accounts given by the workers to the employees of the RIAS had an indirect effect on the historical perspective. A dialogue aired by the RIAS contained a first person perspective on the day’s events, which ultimately fed into the idea of a popular rising with political overtones. This may also have encouraged workers not in Berlin to revolt in a violent and political manner, thinking that the Americans would come if there was “a crisis for freedom” (a term Brant uses to describe the uprising), and a good reason for historians to recount the episode as a political revolution.
With such a difference in numbers and opinions, it is difficult to know which side was closer to the truth (or maybe which was telling the better lie). Unfortunately, occurring in such a dichotomous time between Democracy and Communism, the revolt was characterized on both sides by extreme perspectives. In between the partial analysis, history seems to have failed to establish a balanced picture of the rhyme and reason behind the East German Uprising.

The East German no longer lived in a sovereign political or cultural Germany. He truly inhabited a Soviet satellite, subject to the whims and notions of Moscow. Consumer products disappeared, because in order to fulfill the reparations demanded by the Soviets, almost all of the work force had to be concentrated in heavy industry. Anything East Germany produced boarded a railroad headed east for Russia helping to wound an already sagging economy. Surrounded by portraits of Stalin and Ulbricht and bombarded with Communist propaganda, German identity and culture failed to exist after 1945. The government was a mere puppet, put in place by the Russians to do their bidding. The average East German understood this situation. They had seen Wilheim II. They had seen Hitler. Now they had seen Stalin and his underling Ulbricht. Seeing, however, was not believing, or liking for that matter. The East Germans disliked the Soviets and worst of all, the people who had sold out to them, the SED. But the SED evolved into the only powerful political party, although totally unaccountable to the people because there were no elections, and generally loathed by the populace. There was nowhere for the average German to voice his opinion, and for many Berliners, this meant one thing: it was time to revolt. With a situation where the economy was failing, worker solidarity was strong, and respect for the establishment was non-existent, an event such as the June 1953 uprising became inevitable. The East German worker was a slave trapped in a foreign land, a land once regarded as home.

A pattern developed behind the Iron Curtain: Socialization would be pushed through with reckless speed, the people would suffer, and the inhabitants would revolt. The East Germans were the first in a succession including the Hungarians and the Poles to rise up against the occupying forces of Communism. Yet the Russians never understood from the first uprising in Germany that ignored living and working conditions, shredded civil liberties, and totalitarian leaders do not create content citizens. The East Germans, like so many other Eastern Europeans, were subjugated in their own land to a leader they did not esteem, to a government they did not endorse, and most of all, a workplace over which they had no control. The heart of the German worker burned like the Red flags on June 17th for a respectable, free life with an end to the misery and deprivation the Soviets forced onto East Germany after World War II.

Works Cited

Baring, Arnulf. Uprising in East Germany: June 17, 1953. London: Cornell
University Press, 1972.

Brant, Stefan. The East German Rising. New York: Frederick Praeger, 1957.

Hildebrandt, Rainer. The Explosion: The Uprising Behind the Iron Curtain. New
York: Duel, Sloan and Pierce, 1955.

Large, David Clay. Berlin. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Rempel, Gerhard. “The Uprising of June 13, 1953”. Western New England College.
<http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/germany/lectures/38uprising.html>

Sodaro, Michael. Moscow, Germany, and the West from Khrushchev to Gorbachev.
New York: Cornell University Press, 1991.